The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has spent a tremendous amount of manpower, financial and materials resources in the electoral campaign, in the process forging a tactical alliance with the landlord-bureaucrat capitalist Manuel Villar, the Nacionalista Party--and indirectly with the family of the late fascist puppet dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

satur-ocampo_bongbong-marcos.jpg, image/jpeg, 240x142

May 16, '10

The national circus, called the Philippine national election, is over. In all likelihood, the US-directed Arroyo regime is on its way out of the puppet presidency. And Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III representing the landlord-comprador factional interests will be the next president of the Philippine puppet republic.

µThe Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has spent a tremendous amount of manpower, financial and materials resources in the electoral campaign, in the process forging a tactical alliance with the landlord-bureaucrat capitalist Manuel Villar, the Nacionalista Party--and indirectly with the family of the late fascist puppet dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

But unlike the 1985 snap election campaign where despite misgivings of our united front cadres in all levels, this time many of our legal and even underground cadres refused to get on board the patently Right opportunistic policy of forging such an alliance. There is no point of allying our forces with one faction against another when the weakest and diehard is not either candidates but the mad dog, fascist brute, the US-led Arroyo regime who tried might and main to install her grip on the puppet state beyond her constitutional mandate.

In fact, Ibon’s May 4 media briefing in Balay Kalinaw in UP under Pagbabago asserted that the presidential candidate whose platform is closest to the national democratic 10-point program for a people’s democratic revolution is not even Villar’s but that of Jamby Madrigal.

Madrigal’s campaign, however, is doomed to fail because she neither has the financial and organization resources as well as the charisma to mobilize thousands of the oppressed masses who want to oust Arroyo through the electoral circus.

Comrades working with the basic trade unions, youth and students, and the middle forces who are working in the church sector confirmed this writer’s personal observations that while they may not oppose Villar’s candidacy to avert the impression of Party disunity if not disarray, they will support the Aquino faction. Some veteran cadres even likened the situation to the 1986 snap election where the electoral campaign produced tens of thousands of spontaneous activists who campaigned not just for Cory Aquino but to oust hated and highly isolated fascist puppets.

To entice Villar to bring into the fold the national democratic senatoriables, our Party issued an official statement asserting that Villar “seems to be the most patriotic and progressive.” To clinch the deal in exchange for millions of pesos for campaign funds, the senatoriables in treacherous manner offered the command votes of the revolutionary movement’s guerrilla bases and guerrilla zones.

No less than Ka Simon Santiago of the Regional Political Department, Merardo Arce Command inadvertently admitted using our organized forces with a high level of revolutionary consciousness and respects the people’s democratic state to take part in the reactionary electoral circus. http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/stmts.pl?author=smpd;date=100509;lang=eng

Says he on the PCOS issue as posted in the Philippine Revolutionary Web Central, “The NPA, as a matter of policy and as track record shows, fully respects the people's will in the guerilla base areas especially during this most chaotic election period.”

The people’s will in the guerrilla bases! The Party crème de la crème, the advanced section of the oppressed masses failed to do their role in raising the level of the intermediate elements and to win over the backward elements. Indeed, the Right opportunists within the Party have led (or lowered) the political consciousness of our advanced section among the revolutionary masses to the level to at least the intermediate, but at worse, to the level of the backward masses.

Which brings us to another point. Through great sacrifices and simple living in the homefront, which often created martyrs among our heroic Red Fighters, the New People’s Army withstood the brunt of the worse fascist brutalities in the US-Arroyo regime’s Oplan Bantay Laya I and II. Arroyo will soon bow out, failing to fulfill her promise to crush our people’s army and new democratic revolution.

The CPP Central Committee in its December 26, 2009 statement said we should prepare our protracted people’s war to reach the phase of the strategic stalemate. To accomplish that, we should ideologically, politically and organizationally prepare the Party-led worker and peasant masses in our guerrilla bases and zones for a much higher level of ARMED struggle.

But alas, Arroyo might soon bite the dust with her failed promise, but our Right opportunists have assisted her and the reactionary ruling classes in deflecting our strategic march towards a strategic shift in our revolutionary struggles. By encouraging our organized forces to participate in the 2010 elections, these renegades have foisted the illusion that under the automated election system, parliamentarism and reformism have reflected the "people's will".

Down with the US-Arroyo regime!

Oppose the US-Aquino regime!

Oppose parliamentarism and the Right opportunists and their running dogs within and outside our proletarian party and reject their ideological, political and organizational bankruptcy!

Away with delusions, advance the protracted armed struggle to the higher stage of the strategic stalemate!

“The general character of the electoral contest is determined by the overwhelming predominance of candidates who are themselves big compradors and landlords and who are political agents of the evil forces of foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.”

“The debate among the four major presidential candidates is shallow and superficial. It has not dealt seriously with the basic problems that are the root causes of the oppression and exploitation of the Filipino people. It has trivialized the people’s clamor for change. All the four major candidates are oblivious of the crisis now wracking the world capitalist system and the domestic ruling system due to the US policy dictates of neoliberal globalization and global war of terror.”

Totally true. That should have set the correct proletarian stand, viewpoint and attitude not only on our class enemies but that of the revolutionary forces, both working in the legal and underground, especially those advancing the protracted armed struggle towards the strategic stalemate.

So why are Right opportunists allowed to have their day openly siding with the landgrabber and bureaucrat capitalist Manuel Villar? Why is the proletarian vanguard party officially maintaining an official silent stand on such traitorous, if not downright counterrevolutionary policy?

The traitorous Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza and their so-called tactical alliance have confused, even lead astray, astute veteran communists in the legal national democratic mass movement. A leading academic in a leading state university says on her blog that “this unity (with the puppet and landlord Manuel Villar) on the prosecution of (arch-fascist puppet) Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, exact justice for the human rights victims of the Marcos dictatorship, and to revisit the Visiting Forces Agreement”.

How can these prententious progressives, Judases to the revolutionary cause, running for the puppet senate ignore the warnings and exposés on “Villaroyo”, that is, the outgoing fascist, puppet and bureaucrat capitalist Arroyo is secretly supporting Villar’s candidacy?

Recent developments show this is not a mere black propaganda stunt of the landlord Benigno Aquino III’s public relations handlers. House Speaker Prospero Nograles and Arroyo apologist has “jumped” ship from the Lakas-Kampi presidentiable Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and into Villar’s Nacionalista Party. Nograles even openly criticized their party’s candidate. Another dyed-in-the-wool Arroyo apologist, Mike Defensor, has Villar’s tarpaulin posters plastered in his mayoralty campaign headquarters in Quezon City.

No wonder Lakas-Kampi candidate Teodoro is complaining that his campaign coffer is drying up! It’s not that suddenly that the Arroyo party is out of money. Follow the money, stupid, because the ill-gotten Arroyo funds have beaten a path towards Villar.

The premise of Ocampo and Maza’s Makabayan’s tactical alliance that Villar will exact justice in behalf of the Marcos dictatorship’s human rights victims is belied with the Marcoses’ overwhelming support for Villar’s candidacy.

Moreover, instead of exposing and opposing the connivance between Villar and the fascist Marcos family, the Judas candidates made public pronouncements to justify their entry into the Nacionalista senatorial slate. They have the cheek to gloss over this connivance by deceiving the middle and backward elements among the masses that Villar who promised to “promote” the dictator Marcos into a hero by burying him in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, will work also work in behalf of the Marcos dictatorship’s human rights victims.

Ocampo and Maza bring with them the support of the eight party-list groups under Makabayan--Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, Kabataan, Katribu, Migrante, Courage, and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers. I might add, lead astray these legal parliamentary organizations into being apologists that might eventually shape up towards a US-Villar regime.

After all, Villar promised the Judases that he will review the puppet state’s Visiting Forces Agreement with US imperialism. As even anti-imperialist bourgeois democrats know, the puppet congress has been reviewing the agreement ad nauseam, and always the reactionary congressmen upheld the legislative fiat supporting the agreement and the reactionary Supreme Court--in gross violation of the reactionary 1987 constitution.

Of course, the term “Judas” is appropriate for Ocampo and Maza, as well as those comrades behind them. Despite their efforts to convince the broad masses of the oppressed and exploited Filipino masses that they remain true to revolutionary principles, the real reason is to sell the armed revolutionary struggle for 30 pieces of silver, or millions of pesos of campaign funds from Villar, Arroyo and the Marcoses.

As for Prof. Sison, who remain ensconced in a foreign land away from the homeland and safe from sharing the life-and-death sacrifices of our cadres and Red Fighters, he noted in the Bulatlat interview:

“It would be greatly advantageous for the people and the revolutionary forces if Arroyo would make the foolish mistake of keeping herself in power beyond June 2010. Such a mistake would further inflame the broad masses of the people to rebel and boost the strategic plan of the revolutionary forces to advance from strategic defensive to strategic stalemate in the people’s war.”

That might be true. The question though is: who is more in a position to cheat? The masses know it was the fascist Arroyo who stole the presidential and senatorial elections in 2004, as amply exposed in the notorious “Hello Garci” call.

Can the proletarian party expect to lead the inflamed spontaneous masses to rebel against Arroyo and Villar when the Judases hitched their wagon to Villar who is lagging behind in poll surveys? When it is Arroyo who still controls the intelligence services of the puppet military?

The protracted people’s war can only advance towards the strategic stalemate if the proletarian party cleanses its ranks with Right opportunists who are leading the masses towards bourgeois parliamentarism.

Expose, oppose, and cleanse our revolutionary united front of Right opportunists who are bent on deceiving the masses and deodorizing bourgeois parliamentarism!

Persevere in advancing the protracted people’s war towards the strategic stalemate!

Senator Franklin Drilon’s expose’ on the Savannah Subdivision Project of Manny Villar’s real-estate company, Savannah Communities, cracked open the “tip of the iceberg.” Manny Villar accumulated riches in his real-estate businesses by violating Philippine laws that prohibit the conversion of irrigated agricultural lands and by directly sabotaging the CARP distribution of lands to the landless tillers.

This concrete case debunks the demagoguery of Villar and his Nacionalista Party in their platform, “Response to the People’s Concerns” where Villar and the NP promised:

“the development of agricultural lands and providing livelihood opportunities

shall raise the standard of living in the rural areas and increase manpower

productivity.”

“Food production should be geared towards food self-sufficiency. Emphasis should

be given to staple crops such as rice and corn.”

“We shall develop a National Land Use Policy that promotes optimum utilization

of natural resources for agricultural production…”

“A land to the tiller program is a vital element of a comprehensive strategy for

economic and social development..”

The Savannah case of Iloilo and the numerous business engagements entered into by Villar, caused the land conversion of precious rice and corn lands all over the country, to give way to his unreasonably priced so-called “low-cost” housing projects. His mode of operation runs contrary to what the Villar-Nacionalista platform declares.

Villar paid his way through bribery in DAR, the Registrar of Deeds and DENR to effect the unlawful conversion of CARP lands. How can he clean the government of grafters and corrupt officials if he himself is one of them?

Villar exemplifies the classic Philippine ruling class elite. He may have grown up in Tondo ages ago and crawled up to college through “sipag at tiyaga.” But when he used his in-laws’ (the KBL warlord Filemon Aguilar of Las Piñas) to capitalize his real-estate projects and built up his own wealth as the Filipino Taipan, he already crossed “class lines” and became ‘traitor’ to his original class, anakpawis.

As a top government official who use power and influence to further aggrandize himself with more wealth and power, Villar is now one of the leading Bureaucrat Capitalists of the Philippines.

Villar’s political party, the Nacionalista Party is one of the oldest traditional elitist Party which sprung up from the old Partido Federal of the Philippine Assembly days in 1930s. The Nacionalista party together with the Liberal Party were the political enclaves of the filthy rich ruling classes when the two-party political system came up.

The rich sugar barons, shipping magnates, logging magnates, tobacco monopolists, big-bankers occupied seats in the national legislature and executive offices, divided between the Nacionalist and Liberal parties. When Ka. Amado Guerrero wrote the “Philippine Society and Revolution” he identified the members of the two parties as the bureaucrat capitalists who are ‘lapdogs’of US Imperialists in the country.

The ‘ugly head’ of right opportunism looms over the top CPP leadership. No less than the CPP's 41st Anniversary Statement on December 26, 2009, unabashedly unfurled its support for Manny Villar and the Nacionalist Party.

The statement rightfully appraised the situation as, “The rotten unjust ruling system in chronic crisis is overripe for overthrow and replacement by the people's democratic system.”

Further, the CPP statement lashed out at the reactionary political parties who have nothing fundamental to offer to the people:

“ The major political parties and coalitions vying for offices in the 2010 elections, except Makabayan, avoid or even oppose the people's demand for national indpendence and genuine democracy and do not criticize and repudiate "free market" globalization and the US-instigated policy of terror against the people. The Lakas-Kampi party of the ruling clique clings to its discredited antinational and antidemocratic policies. The major opposition parties, like the Liberal Party and the Partido ng Masang Pilipino concentrate on pretending to be for good governance to dissociate themselves from the scandalous corruption of the Arroyo regime.”

Now dear comrades and friends, where is the Nacionalista Party here. Why wasn’t it mentioned as one of those anti-national, anti-democratic and anti-people ‘trapo’ parties. Has its basic reactionary character changed?

The statement shamelessly praised the Tondo-Boy-turned-Bureaucrat-Capitalist, Manny Villar and called him "the most progressive presidentiable":

“ Among the four major presidential candidates, former Senate President Villar seems to be the most patriotic and progressive insofar as he advocates the interests of Filipino businessmen, expresses sympathy for the workers and peasants and condemns human rights violations.”

The CPP leaders pretended to be modest with their endorsement, but actually lambasted the Villar presidential rivals, as if the former is less elitist or less reactionary than the others:

“ However, it remains to be seen whether he can win and prove himself any better than his major political rivals who have bloodstained records of opposing the demands of the workers and peasants, like Aquino of Hacienda Luisita notoriety, Teodoro of being the mad dog defense secretary of Arroyo and Estrada of having a bellicose record during his failed presidency.”

Any political analyst will conclude that the CPP has selected Villar as its candidate in the May 2010 elections. And this was widely made public, as the statement was published in the official website of the CPP-NPA-NDF and were released to the national broadsheets.

The endorsement was corroborated by the inclusion of known CPP comrades, Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza, as candidates in the Nacionalista Party official party slate. Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, Kabataan Partylist chapters are actively postering and campaigning for Manny Villar as their presidential bet in their bailiwicks. The CPP grapevines report that Villar contributed as much as P60M to the CPP treasury in exchange for a 3M command vote delivery.

“The gods must be crazy,” this was the comment blurted out by a CPP party member in one of their collective meetings. "The CPP leadership framed a five-year plan to build up revolutionary capacities to attain a strategic stalemate with the reactionary regime. The basic requirement was the massive recruitment of 200,000 party members, the enlistment of NPA commanders and redfighters to fill up 60 platoons more in order to increaase the guerilla fronts from 120 to 180 nationwide."

"These can only be achievable if millions of oppressed masses have lost their confidence on the existing bourgeois democratic system and opted for socialism and communism; if the masses will decide “not to live in the old order” and wage people’s war to bring down the ruling political system. And now here we are calling on the people to participate in elections and vote for progressive senators and a reactionary presidentiable," the comrade said.

If the masses will be encouraged to participate in the reactionary elections; if the people will be asked to pin their hopes on bureaucrat capitalist demagogues; if they can not distinguish Satur Ocampo from Manny Villar and Loren Legarda and Bongbong Marcos, then the CPP leadership have towed them away from pursuing the victory of people’s war.

The negotiations with Villar and the Nacionalista Party were initiated by the CPP exiles in Utrecht under the leadership of Jose Ma. Sison. Satur Ocampo and his Bayan Muna and the United Front cadres of the CPP are under his tutelage. The funds generated from the traditional elites who negotiated with the CPP leaders and Bayan Muna goes to their electoral organizations and Utrecht leaders. If ever, there are lesser funds, generated through the “permits to campaign” and revolutionary taxes controlled by the guerilla front-based party echelons. There is now an ongoing tug-of-war for resources between the leftist ‘politicos’ living in style and the comrades living austerely in hard struggle in the countrysides.

The CPP leaders have essentially surrendered their initiatives to the reformist process of reactionary elections. The aftermath of the May 2010 elections will see the “de-Gloriafication” of the ruling reactionary government. It will be a re-emergence of a ‘cleansed’ bourgeois elitist government that will keep the masses forever hoping again for reforms. Renewed confidence will be bestowed to the corrupt bureaucrat capitalists and the masses will further suffer in deepening poverty and despair. The right opportunists in the CPP leadership have delivered the revolutionary forces and people into the hands of the bureaucrat capitalists. µ

Can there really be “meaningful participation” in the reactionary elections of May 2010 ?

Mar 9, '10

Ka. Rosendo Monteroso

The right opportunists in the revolutionary movement are using all the ‘tricks under their sleeves’ to convince comrades that their participation in reactionary elections are consistent in strengthening the revolutionary forces and in weakening the reactionary rule.

They prattle radical analyses of the prevalent ruling system and pay lip service to the “people’s democratic revolution” only to use them as premise for their reformist scheme.

Ka. Rubi Del Mundo writing in behalf of comrades in the NDF-Southern Mindanao correctly stated: “that the Filipino masses should bear no illusion that the elections will bring about thoroughgoing change in our semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and that only the People's Democratic Revolution is our way to genuine liberation and national development.”

Ka Rubi lamented that “majority of the Filipinos wallow in utter destitution with 65.89 million belonging to the poorest of the poor by the end of 2006 alone. In 2009, 3,891 Filipinos go out of the country everyday..” if only to emphasize and dramatize the anguish and sufferings of our countrymen under the unjust economic-political system lorded by big landowners and big comprador bourgeoisie.

Ka. Rubi further underscored that, “ The country's current political and economic situation calls for a need of sweeping and thoroughgoing structural changes that favor the masses. “ She implied that palliative solutions and reforms could not change the downtrodden plight of the masses, with her emphasis on “sweeping and thoroughgoing structural changes” in the prevailing system. Ka Rubi espouses radicalism in uprooting the people’s socio-economic problems.

Ka Rubi and NDF-Southern Mindanao could have sufficiently convinced me that they are bannering the revolutionary line. However, their later statements obscured their earlier conclusions:

“ …while there can be no fundamental pro-people political, economic,

and social changes that the people can expect from the traditional

electoral exercises…. the revolutionary movement recognizes the

important role of a progressive mass movement that engages in

parliamentary struggle and electoral struggle as one of its forms in

bringing to the fore the basic issues and the need for meaningful

structural reforms.”

Ka Rubi’s final call to the people of Southern Mindanao struck a completely dissonant note from her earlier “radicalism” or pretensions at it:

“to raise the basic issues of economic exploitation, national sovereignty

and patrimony and human rights….so that their participation in the electoral

struggle will be meaningful.”

How can participation in a political exercise that has been part of an oppressive system, be “meaningful” when it could not bring about “thoroughgoing changes…that favor the masses?” How can it be politically significant if the people could not expect fundamental changes in the end?

The same is true with the crooked logic of Banda Kathmandu in “Criticize Dogmatism, Build the Broadest United Front and Mobilize the Masses in their Millions in the 2010 Elections.”

Banda pointed out that,“ The long history of corrupt elitist rule in the country have finally broken the Filipinos’ patience.… The people want change. The people want to end the rule of the TRAPOS.”

Since the 1930’s, from the time of the Philippine Assembly, up to the postwar puppet republic and the present post-EDSA elitist rule, the people’s accumulated experience have finally crystallized into the realization of the bankruptcy and futility of traditional elitist elections.

Yet Banda’s statement stepped backward by calling on comrades to participate in the reactionary elections, only because it is the way to “mobilize the masses in tens of thousands” and “to build tactical alliances” even among the reactionaries themselves!

Comrade Banda, the EDSA uprising of 1986 mobilized the masses in millions and forged broad alliances between rich and poor, between oppressed and oppressors, between the people and fascists, but nothing revolutionary ever came out of it.

Up to the present our people’s war is still in the strategic defensive stage. We have consistently 'tailed' behind the endless reformism offered by the ruling class. The masses are fed up with the reactionary elitist elections. Yet here we are, reinforcing the false hopes being dangled by the trapos and demagogues. Our comrades in the united front should seriously consider this. We can never develop revolutionaries from bourgeois reactionary processes. Revolutionary consciousness and revolutionaries are developed “from without, not from within” the reactionary processes.

Finally, our comrades should also know that Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza will spend P52M in their senatorial campaign. These will be spent on posters, radio-tv ads, campaign sorties, etc. It would be a crime to the people to squander all those funds on activities that will not significantly contribute to people’s war.

Our comrades in the united front should realize that P52M could sustain a basic load (of 300 rounds of ammunition per rifle) for our 4,500 rifles for two years. It could provide us with 433 M4 latest rifles to fully equip12 NPA platoons, or it could arm a bigger number of 44 NPA platoons that combine old and brand new rifles. The P52M could also completely arm 321 six-man-teams of urban partisans with brand new pistols or machine pistols. Or it could provide the basic logistics for all party organs and army units in all 120 guerilla fronts for one year or more.

Any revolutionary with the right mind will see the big difference between the “significance” of participating in a losing electoral struggle, compared to the gains in the people’s war that could be generated with the same resources. We should stop the right opportunists from their reformist and futile scheme and shift all efforts and resources to achieve the qualitative leap in our people’s war.